Municipal Assembly of North Mitrovica votes against Petition for Ivanovic’s street: „The Petition not in accordance with the Statute“

The municipal assembly of North Mitrovica dismissed the petition to name a street in North Mitrovica after the murdered SDP leader Oliver Ivanovic. It took place after voting on a document presented by a three-member municipal commission earlier formed to analyze the submitted petition with 12 votes for, 2 against while 2 abstained.

The Assembly met on Friday to discuss a set of issues that were officially listed in the discussion agenda, but not the question of naming a street as Ivanovic’s party had requested several times already.

During the previous regular session, the 6th edition, which took place in May it was agreed to list the issue of the petition (submitted in May following an initial GI SDP’s’s request) on the official agenda for the next meeting. As this failed to be done, the point was introduced yesterday as a supplementary item on the agenda again following GI SDP’s repeated request.

It resulted in the a 2-hour discussion on the validity of the petition, i.e. the commission’s findings.

The petition was submitted to the North Mitrovica Assembly on May 31st, with 1,730 citizens’ signatures, of which 523 signatures were collected electronically

„It’s unfortunate what Oliver had to endure in his city, especially coming from you, as a former member of his party,“ Ksenija Bozovic, a member of the Municipal Assembly of North Mitrovica, addressed the assembly chairman, Dejan Guresic, a former close party associate of Ivanovic’s party, who spoke on the findings of the Petition Analysis document established by himself and his two colleagues – Nedzad Memovic on behalf of the municipality and Olivera Milosevic on behalf of the CSOs.

The commission, in a signed document (the document was published on the KoSSev website), established „the existence of reasonable doubt of the regularity of the collected signatures“, then made the proposal to dismiss the petition „because it is not in accordance with the Municipal Statute of North Mitrovica“.

Guresic further presented the commission’s finding on the online signatures (523 signatures claimed by GI SDP):

„This form of petition and these signatures cannot be considered credible because only an email address was required in order to sign the petition, which raises doubts“.
The commission found „unusual names“ such as „Ivana R“, „Francesco Biberkovic“, „Milena Milena“, „Kobe Bryant“, „Dejan Tefterdoo“.

Apart of verbally disapproving the signatures of „various footballers“, the double signature of close relatives of Oliver Ivanovic, the signature of a dead person, Guresic stated another conclusion:

The doubt in regularity was raised about the authenticity of 40 signatures suspected to belong to the same handwriting.

North Mitrovica MA Chairman added that although the commission „did not have the opportunity to hire a graphologist“, still, even by “ amateur analysis“, it creates a „suspicion about the credibility of the signatures“.

Gi SDP will file a court lawsuit against Guresic to prove his allegations, but they also stressed that they will submit the petition „however many times it takes“ while correcting any weakenesses.

Marko Jaksic: Oliver Ivanovic was murdered in our city for no reason

„Why are you doing what you are doing? Oliver was a man from this city, the same as the three other people who were killed that you mentioned from this city, all killed innocent. So they deserved to have a street, square, or anything in this city named after them. Why are we dragging politics into this? You are counting the number of blood cells with this signature issue. If the petition does not contain all required elements, as such – it should be dismissed, but this does not dismiss our request, which I have repeated for the fifth time here: Oliver Ivanovic and the people you mentioned should have a street named after them in this city. So let us stop dragging this out because we will submit the petition again. We will correct all the deficiencies. I claim that my family members and my colleagues are standing behind their signatures here making at least a hundred of us. We do not share the same political views, but they think that Oliver Ivanovic was murdered in our city for no reason and that he did not deserve it. All this could be solved very easily and with dignity for all of us and for the future of this city,“ said assembly member Marko Jaksic.